Writing & Photography by Justin Negard It all starts with a bowl of grapes. “Is that it?” you think to yourself. “I came here for a handful of purple grapes and a bottle of water on a lunch tray?” After all, this is the Culinary Institute of America (CIA)—the oldest, and some would argue the best, culinary school in America, ...

Writing by Gia Miller Photography by Justin Negard When sisters Joana and Meto Herrera took over Armonk’s Mariachi Mexico from their father in 2013, they had one main goal: it should look, taste and sound just like home. During the restaurant’s long-standing January break, they transformed the Tex-Mex favorite into something that reminded them of Tlaxcuapan, the small town in ...

By Gia Miller Photography by Justin Negard One late October morning in 2009, Sunny Cover (pronounced like “clover” without the “l”) put on her beige 1940s vintage women’s business suit and drove from Peekskill to Hawthorne to meet with the board of Community Capital New York—they were her last hope. Cover needed $63,000 to save her beloved coffee shop, Peekskill ...

Writing by Ava Fleisher Photography by Justin Negard Envision, if you will, a hot summer day amidst the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in June 2020. With the sun beaming down on the parking lot of Northern Westchester Hospital, healthcare workers flocked to a trailer where free lunches were served by Jason Charles and his family, who own what is ...

Writing by Gia Miller Photography by Justin Negard It’s hard work running a restaurant, much less two. But the Jewel of Himalaya owner is perfectly suited for it — he's worked tirelessly his entire life. When Tshering T. Lama was five years old, his parents enrolled him in a boarding school. He lived in a small Nepalese village called Solukhumbu, ...

Writing  by Gia Miller Photography by Justin Negard When it comes to Italian food, Le Fontane owner Antonio Abbate knows what he’s talking about. Born and raised in Capri, Italy, Abbate worked in his relatives’ restaurants as a teen. And, in 1985, when a Capri-based restaurant company put out a call for staff to relocate to Bermuda, he jumped at ...

Imagine, if you will, your perfect coffee shop. Does it include floor-to-ceiling windows, indoor and outdoor seating, the option for breakfast or lunch along with coffee, beer or wine (because we all have those days), and maybe even some yoga? Yeah, that’s what we imagine, too. So starting in March, you’ll find us holding meetings and catching up with friends ...

In 2020, chef Andrea Calstier and his wife Elana Oliver were ready for their next move. Born and raised in Marseilles, France, the high school sweethearts were living the American dream. They’d moved to Manhattan in 2017 and opened their first restaurant a year later, when they were only 23 years old. Papilles was a 10-table restaurant in the East ...

Anne Mayhew wanted to learn how to bake “really good bread,” and with three kids under the age of four, it was an ambitious endeavor. She mastered sourdough while her kids slept, and soon her friends began asking to buy her loaves. From there, it snowballed, and she named her home bakery LMNOP Bakery, as in the letters of the ...

Every town deserves a good bakery – a place where neighbors can go for delicious cookies, fluffy pastries, a range of breads and to decompress while they sip a steaming cup of coffee. BreadsNBakes is all these things, and more. It’s a friendly place where the staff enjoy a good back-and-forth banter with each other and the customers. The coffee, ...

It happens at least once a month – we’re having a conversation with someone and, regardless of the original topic, the subject turns to the lack of a good bar in the area. “I really wish there was a place where we could just hang out at night,” they’ll say. “Not a restaurant with a bar, but an actual bar ...

Chef Elmer Oliveros enjoys fine dining, and he’ll save for an entire year to indulge in the tasting menu at Per Se. “I see God while I eat, and it’s amazing,” he says. But it’s always difficult to get his friends to go with him – it’s intimidating, and he can relate. “I remember going to a restaurant and they ...